Best Dying Light The Beast settings for optimized PC performance

If you're on the hunt for the best Dying Light The Beast settings, we've got you covered. There's an expected improvement to the visual quality over the original game from 2015 and, with a wealth of visual settings to tweak, we've taken the guesswork out of this task to get you playing quicker with the best balance of image quality and frame rate.

The Dying Light The Beast system requirements cover everything from decade-old Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics cards all the way up to the RTX 5070, which is listed for 4K ultra performance. Whether you have one of the best graphics card picks from our buying guide or not, great performance in Dying Light The Beast shouldn't be too hard to come by, with the game even being Steam Deck Verified. If you want to read our full thoughts on this horror adventure, you can read our glowing Dying Light The Beast review.

• VSync: On
• Dynamic Resolution Scaling: Off
• Frame Rate Limiter: Off
• Upscaler Type: DLSS
• Upscaling Mode: Quality
• Frame Generation: Off (for testing purposes, but feel free to enable to boost performance if preferred)
• Field of View: 70
• Glow: Off
• Light Streaks: On
• Lens Flare: On
• Chromatic Aberration: On
• Film Grain Effect: Off
• Motion Blur Intensity: 75
• Renderer Mode: D3D12
• Asynchronous Compute: On
• Texture Quality: High
• Draw Distance Multiplier: 140
• Motion Blur Quality: High
• Particles Quality: High
• Shadows Quality: High
• Screen Space Shadows: On
• Ambient Occlusion Quality: High
• Glocal Illumination Quality: High
• Reflections Quality: High
• Flashlight Quality: High
• Fog Quality: High
• Postprocess Quality: High

Using our RTX 4070 test rig (full specs below, in the How we test section), we achieved an average frame rate of 115fps with 1% lows of 91fps at 1,920 x 1,080. Moving up to 2,560 x 1,440, the average dropped to 101fps with 1% lows of 77fps. As for 4K, this returned an average frame rate of 52fps with 1% lows of 45fps.

Generally speaking, Dying Light The Beast runs incredibly well on our RTX 4070. There are expected struggles once we reach 4K, but 1080p and 1440p performance is very strong, and can be made even stronger should you wish to enable frame generation. With frame generation enabled, our average frame rate at 1080p rose to 199fps, while at 1440p it rose to 188fps.

Ideally, in single-player games, we want to be hitting an average frame rate of 60fps with 45fps as the 1% low. We're well clear of these targets in Dying Light, and the gameplay is extremely smooth with no noticeable performance issues, even when engaging in combat against large enemy mobs.

The only settings we advise turning off are Glow and Film Grain Effect. Glow created some awkward moments when bright lights are on screen, which is quite frequent in the early stages of the game, and the game looks much prettier without the film grain filter over it.

We ran the same section of the game throughout testing, just after the opening section of the game, as you enter the open world, because the game doesn't currently have a built-in benchmark.

Dying Light The Best graphics presets

There are four total graphics presets in Dying Light The Beast.

• Very Low
• Low
• Medium
• High

The main graphics menu doesn't offer much to change, beyond the upscaler you're using, whether you want to use frame generation, and a few resolution and frame rate settings. However, head to the advanced menu, and there are plenty of individual graphics settings that you can adjust accordingly. Some are simple on/off options, while others mimic the graphics presets with scales from very low to high.

Surprisingly, there isn't a huge difference in the quality between the very low and high graphics presets, at least in terms of what can be easily shown in a still image. The biggest obvious difference is in the quality of the shadows, with those in the right part of the above image (right-click and open in a new tab for original sizing) looking harsh and blocky, while those in the left part look softer and more realistic. Overall lighting and texture quality are a little clearer too, but the bigger differences in the number of and quality of effects are much more noticeable when in combat and during fast-paced running or platforming sections.

Accessibility settings in Dying Light The Beast

When first booting Dying Light The Beast, you'll be presented with the following accessibility settings: motion sickness reduction, subtitles, colorblind mode, QTE hold, and mono audio output.

Thankfully, there are even more settings you can access from the main menu, including subtitle color and size. There are also input settings you can adjust from the "game" submenu in the settings.

These are easy to adjust, and can be done while in the game too, not just from the main menu. Each setting also has a detailed description and examples of what it changes in-game, so you don't have to deal with trial and error.

How we tested Dying Light The Beast

At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Dying Light The Beast includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in dual-channel configuration, and an MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. Finally, we also test in 4K. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Dying Light The Beast need an SSD?

Dying Light The Beast requires an SSD, as specified in the system requirements. At just shy of 70GB, the download file isn't huge, but you may want to make sure you've got enough space if you're only working with a single drive.

If you are still using an old-school mechanical drive and need to upgrade, or perhaps you just need some extra storage space, you can find our current SSD recommendations in our best gaming SSD guide.

How to monitor performance in Dying Light The Beast

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Dying Light The Beast, we have an easy method that works whether you're using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit Alt + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.

If you want to grab yourself some Dying Light freebies, you can check out our Dying Light The Best docket code guide.

You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We've also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.